Implementing Salesforce is a project. No matter the scale, or what kind of business you are, it requires effective management and a deep understanding of the platform, for it to deployed smoothly. Project management is the discipline of planning, organising, securing and managing resources to bring about successful completion of project goals and objectives. When choosing which partner to align with on your Salesforce journey, look for one that knows exactly what they’re doing.

At Ceterna, we’re building our reputation on delivering solutions that generate results and value with our rapid and iterative approach. We’re able to deliver because we’re experienced and know what makes the management of a project successful. The key to delivering a successful project is how it takes place.

When it comes to delivering a project, the saying, ‘the bigger the better’ does not apply. Project delivery is more likely to be successful when a ‘phased approach’ is taken. This means breaking the project down and achieving smaller results one step at a time before moving onto the next. By breaking the project down into smaller components, each step can be completed with care and 100% satisfaction before moving onto the next step, resulting in a successful project that achieves its original goals and objectives with no failures.

The Ceterna Methodology illustrates this transparently. We break down our projects into five key stages; Discover, Design, Build, Validate and Deliver. Each of these stages are broken down further into smaller components and are completed with 100% client satisfaction before moving on to the next step. Our step-by-step methodology means that we encourage our customers to get fully involved from the early stages, so that they can fully shape the solution through its iterations as it is built. This gives you, the customer full control and input on the solution, so you get a solution that works for you and not just for us.

The morning kicked off with an insightful keynote presentation by Salesforce’s Chief Operating Officer, George Hu. Representatives from Phillips and Coca-Cola Enterprises joined George on stage and spoke about how they have adopted the ‘customer company’ philosophy. The talks gave an insight into how each have transformed the way they sell, service, market and innovate. In a nutshell, the talks inspired all who listened to follow in their footsteps and become a customer company.

The highlight of the keynote presentation was the announcement of the launch of the Salesforce Communities platform. The new platform allows for companies to create private social communities with an aim to connect and collaborate with all stakeholders including customers, partners and suppliers, driving ‘breakthrough collaboration and productivity’. The launch of the platform will be the industry’s first social and mobile solution. We’re excited to see how Salesforce Communities will transform businesses and evolve.

The itinerary for the rest of the day consisted of hands on workshops and breakout sessions covering a range of topics attracting salesforce stakeholders of all kinds. In the main keynote hall, presentations were being given on Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud. The Unilever team gave an inspiring talk on their ‘crafting brands for life’ project. They illustrated how their new digital platform worked to help and arm their employees with the necessary tools to develop and drive performance in local markets around the world.

The day was educational, inspiring and insightful to round it up. If you were unlucky enough to miss out, check out Salesforce’s YouTube channel to catch up with the keynote presentations that were delivered.

The day was split into two with the morning session aimed at prospective users, helping them to gain an insight into salesforce and the afternoon session dedicated to existing users of salesforce, helping them to gain a further insight into salesforce and the breadth of its capability. Ceterna’s Mark Rees gave an intuitive presentation with the title ‘Giving you your time back’; speaking about Ceterna as a salesforce implementation partner and how we can help businesses achieve their goals and improve business productivity with their salesforce instances.

The presentations given by salesforce were insightful and educational. A number of salesforce demonstrations were shown to illustrate how prospective and existing users of salesforce could implement a number of ‘quick wins’ to see the benefits of salesforce in action immediately. Some of these quick wins included:

• Customer Knowledge – Fields can be created quickly and reported on to show and track communications with a customer. Find out who your top customers are and if they are repeat customers. Report on the percentage of won opportunities to provide insight into how well you are doing.

• Contacts Organisation – Quickly centralise and organise your contacts and accounts in salesforce so you are able to access and utilise the information quickly and when you need it.

• Consolidate your Pipeline – Keep on top of your forecasting by gaining insight into your pipeline. At the click of a few buttons, salesforce can generate pipeline reports for managerial staff.

• Collaborate with your Colleagues – Salesforce Chatter allows you to follow your fellow colleagues and keep up to date with the latest news and updates. It also provides a platform on which you can seek assistance from fellow colleagues instantly.

• Collect Competitive Intelligence – Gain insight into your competition by tracking competition on deals, measure the deals you have lost to competitors and use this intelligence to better your chances on the next deal.

Overall, the day was a success and ended with the sun still shining brightly, despite the interruption of a dash of hailstones (London weather for you!).

At Ceterna Labs or C-Labs for short, we’ve been brewing applications that can capture digital signatures and notes. And abracadabra, we’ve created our ‘C-Sign’ and ‘C-Note’ applications. In sweet and simple terms, the two applications work by allowing the user to capture signatures and notes made on digital devices such as tablets.

On a step-by-step basis, the applications work by first providing you with a simple ‘draw’ area, where the signature or notes can be inputted (as seen below). Once you’ve signed on the dotted line or written your notes, you’ll then be able to digitally capture the signature or notes in records. The signatures and/or notes are then saved to your ‘Notes & Attachments’, which can then be retrieved whenever you need them. At Ceterna, we use the C-Sign app as part of our proposal process – allowing for us to sign on the dotted line digitally.

Like all applications, the applications allow us to work more efficiently by making the process of capturing signatures and notes, quick and simple. Our generous nature means that we haven’t kept these applications solely to ourselves. We have shared and implemented the C-Sign application for our clients too.

C-Sign & C-Note are not the only applications we’ve developed in our C-Labs. For further information on customised applications for your business and some of our other applications, check out the C-Labs website page.

As users of salesforce ourselves, we wanted to streamline the process of generating and distributing documents. That’s why we went on the hunt for an application that could allow for us to create client communications on the fly. After careful consideration we went for an application called Conga Composer and have since implemented it for many of our customers, so feel we know how to get the best from it.

Conga Composer is an application that allows you to generate documents including customisable proposals, account plans, contracts, presentations and emails with content from multiple objects and related lists. It is seamlessly integrated with salesforce and is fully customisable so you can generate the documents specific to you and your business needs. Once you’ve created your documents, you’re then able to distribute them any way you like. And lastly, Conga Composer allows you automate said tasks for improved efficient. You’re able to set up workflow-triggered operations and carry out repetitive tasks using batch operations or automated scheduling for improved efficiency.

At Ceterna, we use Conga Composer to generate our proposals. The data we enter into our salesforce is pulled into our customised report template from pricebooks and assets and outputted as Microsoft Word or PDF formats. Conga Composer has enabled us to simplify our sales process. We’ve also recommended and implemented Conga Composer to many of our clients all of who have reported positive reviews.

 For more information on how Conga Composer works, watch the demonstration below:

LinkPoint Connect is an application that integrates your email application with salesforce CRM. LinkPoint360, a leading provider of enterprise email integration software applications to the CRM industry, created LinkPoint Connect with the goal of simplifying the user experience and increasing user productivity on a daily basis. LinkPoint Connect works by allowing users to work seamlessly between their email applications and salesforce. The application allows for users to:

• Record inbound and outbound emails to salesforce
• Create tasks or appointments when recording emails
• Access salesforce straight from your email
• Drag and drop to create contacts and leads in salesforce
• Create new records in salesforce straight from your email
• Click-to-dial calling using VOIP from Outlook
• Get maps and driving directions to your customers

You won’t be disappointed with an application like LinkPoint Connect. The application allows for you to easily pull information from an email into your salesforce to be shared with colleagues – no more having to cut and paste! It helps you to keep your database up to date and current by allowing you to easily create new contacts straight from an email signature. Its calendar feature allows for you to keep your diary organised and free of double bookings by allowing you to sync your calendar with LinkPoint. It also allows for you to create email attachments directly from your salesforce document library.

 Its simplicity, ease of use and it’s benefits of time saving and user adoption is what makes it highly popular. Here at Ceterna, we’ve implemented LinkPoint Connect for many of our clients and all with a positive outcome. User adoption has been high and user acceptance has been positive.

Check out the short demo of LinkPoint Connect in action below.

For other email platform demos, view them on the LinkPoint 360 website.

Putting the cherry on top, salesforce have announced an even stronger focus on being mobile this year, with the launch of salesforce Service Cloud Mobile last month. The aim of the Service Cloud Mobile is to allow for users to “deliver breakthrough customer service anytime and on any device”. Features of this new platform including:

• Co-Browsing – Agents can guide customers on mobile devices via any browser
• Communities – Provide your customers a single destination to find and answer questions via self-service, peers or community experts
• Chat – The ability to chat instantly live with an agent from any mobile device
• Touch – Stay ahead of the mobile trend by encouraging your users to resolve cases on the go with devices including the Amazon Kindle, Android, iPad or iPhone

This new app lines up nicely with salesforce current mobile portfolio. With existing mobile apps such as Sales Cloud and salesforce Chatter, helping you run your organisation from anywhere. Many organisations are shifting their spotlight onto being more mobile as mobile-based engagement is becoming key to being a ‘customer company’. With technological innovations, customers are able to engage and interact with companies via a multitude of different channels. Salesforce can help a company get closer to their fellow colleagues and customers through the various mobile apps now available for companies to engage and interact within. Apps like these help companies provide the high standards of customer service many strive to achieve through team collaboration and timely resolution of customer issues.

Watch the following videos below for a glimpse of some of salesforce mobile apps:

]]> http://www.ceterna.com/2013/03/mobile-salesforce/feed/ 0 http://www.ceterna.com/2013/03/user-adoption-key-salesforce-crm-success/ http://www.ceterna.com/2013/03/user-adoption-key-salesforce-crm-success/#comments Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:54:34 +0000 Ceterna http://www.ceterna.com/?p=1250 Continue Reading]]> Salesforce success is attributed to a number of factors, with user adoption being one of the key factors that lead to salesforce success. User adoption is how users adapt to the new salesforce CRM and how they are using it to maximise it’s full potential.

An effective training plan plays a huge role in helping users adapt to salesforce. Salesforce recommends these 10 tips for planning and carrying out a successful training program.

• Set Expectations – Provide your users with an overview of what they can expect from salesforce and how they are expected to use it.
• Input & Visibility – users need to understand that if the data is not present in salesforce, it does not exist. Data input is vital and gives managers the advantage of pipeline visibility and aids accurate forecasting.
• Clear User Metrics – Inform users of how they will be measured. For example, set target dates for tasks to be completed, how often a user should be logged on and how many objects they create.
• Benefits of Salesforce – Let users know how salesforce CRM will benefit them. For example, less administrative work, easier reporting, easy access, visible sales pipeline and easy forecasting.
• Hands On Training – Provide hands on training with real life scenarios and data.
• Reinforce your Processes – Use the introduction of salesforce CRM as an opportunity to roll out new processes that will make life easier or users.
• Terminology References – Help users learn the language of salesforce by providing documents for reference. The free online course can be used as a good training prerequisite to give users a head start.
• Offer Incentives – Motivate users by creating a little competition or by providing incentives.
• Get Feedback – Ask people for their opinions. Make necessary changes to reflect feedback.
• Follow Up Training – Ensure that you organise a follow up training session. Users will have had a chance to settle in and will have a whole new set of questions.

The other ingredient for ensuring user adoption success is through having adoption metrics in place. Metrics will allow you to track if your users are using salesforce, so that they get the most out of it. Three key metrics include:

• Usage – Measuring login rates, number of accounts, opportunities, contacts created, etc. This will give you an idea of how active users are and that data is being consistently updated.
• Data Quality – It is important to ensure that data is being inputted correctly and in a consistent and accurate manner. This ensures strong data integrity and reliability, which results in higher user confidence and successful user adoption.
• Business Performance – Ensure that users are using salesforce to its full potential to enhance business performance.

For more tips on how to succeed with salesforce, visit the Customer Community at Salesforce and watch the video below.

DupeCatcher is a data management application that integrates with salesforce to help you keep your database clean and tidy. It works by blocking duplicates as they are entered manually or automatically (web-to-leads). The deduplication process is configured and controlled by the user, so you have full control over what it tidies up. You and your business benefit by having a database that is organised and fully efficient, minimising the risk of poor customer service or potential loss sales.

The application works on a real time basis, blocking and deleting duplicates as they are entered. Duplicate leads can be merged or converted with existing contacts and accounts. Configuration parameters including customised accounts, contacts, lead dedupe rules can be created in the deduplication process for control measures and run reports can also be set up to see when it is triggered.

DupeCatcher is a free application, downloadable from the Salesforce AppExchange, provided by Symphonic Source. It is easy to install by the click of a button, and there is no software to download or maintain. DupeCatcher is regularly updated, with feedback from users being taken into consideration. Many users have rated the application positively on the AppExchange, and here at Ceterna, we too would give DupeCatcher 5 stars.

Watch the DupeCatcher Demo.

Organisations that self implement salesforce with no previous experience can find post implementation, that they are not getting the best from it. These challenges have been found in reporting, data quality, lack of visibility and controls to name a few. These usually stem from the lack of a defined implementation structure. Our consultant team here at Ceterna encourage a detailed implementation process to be outlined prior to any configuration.

There are five key areas for consideration prior to implementation, these include:

1. Identify Key Operational Metrics
2. Define Business Processes
3. Clear Data Model
4. Friendly User Interface
5. Validate Permissions & Visibility

It is important to understand the key performance indicators that you need to run your business. From this, business processes can then be defined and a clear data model can be illustrated to capture it. Once these factors are in place, a user-friendly interface can be designed to ensure that users can easily execute their tasks. Finally, permissions and visibility should be validated.

Investing in an expert team of consultants not only benefits you in the short run, but in the long run too. With consultants able to configure salesforce to exactly how you and your business need it to run, taking into consideration current business operations as well as possible future development and growth. Your salesforce solution can therefore be implemented to support present and future business aspirations.

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